Happy ‘It’s The Economy Day’

Peter van Vliet writes in a Queen’s Birthday op-ed in The Age: “We changed our national anthem from God Save the Queen to Advance Australia Fair several decades ago but despite our growing republican leanings we have stalled at renaming today’s holiday. Our nation seems stuck in an imperial time warp following the 1999 republican referendum with all its unresolved issues. A new name for today might be a good first step in beginning to unstick ourselves from this unfortunate scenario.”

The great thing about a republic is it can lift us above our inevitable cultural and religious (and even sporting) differences that are common to any large nation. It can unite Australians in all their diversity around a core citizenship that is based unequivocally on the universal values of democracy, equality and inclusion.

Well that’s your basic problem right there – the universal values of democracy, equality and inclusion?? Beyond some perfunctory lip-service, I’d argue that Australian power elites are not all that keen on democracy, and as for equality and inclusion – that’s just so much discredited loony leftist coercive ideology. We now know that promoting equality and inclusiveness actually cause inequality and exclusion. Only globalised free-market economics can fix the things that ail society.

I suggest that in honour of this universal truth and the endless bounty it provides we abandon all notions of monarchy and republicanism and rename today’s public holiday “The Economy Day”, or in the interests of economy, the thirty percent more efficient “Economy Day”.